Two types of blogging lawyers : Doers and slackers
Marketing and sales consultant, Marcus Sheridan, writes that when it comes to blogging there are two types of business people:
- The person that has every excuse as to why there isn’t enough time or resources to blog (slacker); and
- The person that makes no excuses and simply does what it takes (doer).
Sheridan shared the story of a doer – Kirk Drake, the owner of a company that specializes in backup cloud-computing services for the credit union industry. Drake knew the value of blogging and was committed to do whatever it took.
- Along with a core staff of less than a dozen employees, Drake took the time to brainstorm all the questions they get from clients, and then turned these questions into titles for blog posts.
- He then assigned the articles to his fellow employees and told them the company would spend 90 minutes a day, during working hours, over the course of 3 straight days, to write the answers to these questions.
- Over a 3-day period, the staff spent a total of 4.5 hours each answering these questions in their own words, with the end result being over 100 blog posts.
Was it worth it? Drake went from getting 1-2 leads a month to one a day in just 6 months. And better yet, he saw an increase in revenue from “Somewhere between $500,000 to $1,000,000 in the first year.”
Drake continued on doing 200 blog posts and an ebook, all in the first year. Sure that sounds like a ton of a work, but if you divide the effort and grow revenue like Drake has, it’s not all bad.
The message for law firms:
- Business development takes work, there’s no way around it.
- No excuses from lawyers who say they are too busy to blog, but aren’t generating the revenue they’d like.
- Divide up the blogging load among multiple lawyers.
- Keep track of client and prospective client questions.
- Answer the questions in an easy to read conversational tone. If you can do a 3 to 3 paragraph email answer, that’s a blog post.
- No ghost authors. Lawyers answering real questions from real people are the best at answering questions quickly.
Starting LexBlog, almost 10 years ago, I advised lawyers to blog answers. Keep a legal pad on your desk and write, ‘Blog,’ across the top of it. Each time a client or prospective client calls or emails with a question write it down on your ‘blog pad.’ In a month’s time, I told them, you’ll have more questions than you can shake a stick at.
Pick out a couple questions a week and answer them. Not in memo or legalese format, but in plain talk, I explained. If you had to do an email in 20 minutes briefly answering a client’s question because you were meeting your spouse for dinner, you’d do it. Why not a blog post answering a question?
Well a lot of lawyers took my advise and they’ve generated a boat load of work as a result.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Answers to questions clients and prospective clients ask builds trust and demonstrates your care and expertise. The content also does exceedingly well on Google. You need not look for keywords when you’re using the keywords your audience is already using.
Break out of the slacker’s club – give Drake’s methods a try.